Even Bad Girls Fall in Love
by NoTimeToStop
Summary: Mal thought the worst thing about falling in love was the pressure, but when she returns to the Isle of the Lost, good and evil take on new meaning. With old friends and new enemies, she may just lose the one person she loves most. [Based on the trailer for the sequel. Written before movie release, so follows my own plot.] MalBen.
1. ONE

**Even Bad Girls Fall in Love**

 **ONE**

Mal assumed the worst thing about falling in love was the pressure: the pressure to overcome her upbringing and the influence of her mother, the pressure to conform to this ideal of the perfect princess, and the pressure of loving a boy who wasn't just a boy, but the future king of all Auradon. Pressure building and building, constricting her and demanding of her more than she could handle. Pressing against her and compressing her, confining her inside their boundaries, their borders, the lines in their impeccable little coloring books, until she thought she would scream. Losing bits and pieces of herself, less of the feisty Mal who had spray painted graffiti on her locker and baked amateur spells, and resembling more and more a clone, an immaculate copy of Audrey, and basically every other daughter of a queen who had ever graced the halls of Auradon Prep.

It was only inevitable that she would snap under all that weight. She couldn't take anymore. The pictures, the questions, the demands on her time, her energy, and her resources. The critical eyes and tongues waiting for the slightest slip-up, watching like vultures for the moment she collapsed to the ground and they could swoop in and devour her whole. And, oh god, the demands on fashion! Dressing her up and styling her hair – brushing, combing, pinning, curling, straightening, blow-drying – like their personal life-sized Barbie doll. Through all the fuss and mayhem she endured. She _wanted_ to be good, for herself. For Ben. She loved Ben, she wanted to be with him, but the more she tried to fit into the image of the future king's girlfriend, the less she saw of him, the less she recognized herself. The space between them seemed to widen and expand, and she realized just how different they were. She couldn't do it anymore. She wanted to go home. She wanted to have fun.

So she left. Packed her bags and escaped in the middle of the night. No goodbyes, no messages, just disappeared into thin air like a ghost. Like the criminal she had been born to be.

The Isle of the Lost was exactly as she remembered it. She felt the air change as she stepped through the barrier – flat and devoid of magic, the absence of that delightful buzz that filled Auradon, and replaced with the pungent sights, sounds, and smells of her childhood. Metal and wooden structures crowded close together, half-collapsing and falling in on themselves, held up by the unwilling support of their neighbor. The dirty streets, caked in grime and trash, remains of food and papers, trampled underfoot. A layer of debris and mud inches thick, instead of the eternally clean cobblestones of Auradon. Clothing and useless flying carpets, now nothing more than dusty floor rugs, were draped over makeshift clothes lines. Discarded magical objects, once powerful and dangerous, littered pawn shops and garbage piles. A few optimistic scavengers searched these piles, hopefully trying an object here or there, testing the limits of King Beast's enchantment.

The music of the Isle of the Lost was shouting: yelling, screaming, children crying, the typical indictments and profanities, useless curses that Mal had heard since she was a toddler. Drunken off-key refrains of old men in pubs, singing of their glory days. The rattling and banging of the youth, metal scraping metal, whoops and hollers and peals of high-pitched laughter, as they wreaked chaos and mischief. Another typical Wednesday afternoon. Loud. It was always loud on the Isle, even at night. While the sounds were hardly pleasing, they were comforting in their familiarity.

The air was heavy and thick, hazy with smoke and rancid with the combined smells of human waste, body odor, stale beer, and decay. Mal breathed deeply and smiled: finally, she was home.

Nostalgia was a funny thing. She had spent her entire life trying to get out of this hole, and now here she was, willingly back again. She had missed it. Nothing was changed.

The streets were dark; a street lamp here or there sporadically flickered to life, but most of the bulbs were broken and shattered. Gloomy shapes rose in the night. It was strange for Mal, traversing her old stomping grounds without her three faithful companions at her side. The Four Musketeers. They were the children of four of the greatest villains known to Auradon; even on the Isle of the Lost their names were whispered in hushed, terrified tones. The Evil Queen, vain and cruel, who had once vowed to pluck out the heart of her own step-daughter. Jafar, whose craftiness, power, and manipulation had almost helped him take over all of Agrabah. Cruella de Ville, one of the only among them devoid of magic, but whose cruelty, thirst for blood, and greed knew no bounds, who would have killed a pack of sweet, innocent little puppies just to line her new fur coat. And Maleficent, perhaps the most frightening villain, who had cursed an entire kingdom over a slight at a party. Dark, regal, and terrible, treacherous and unforgiving as the sea, a being of despair, a goddess straight from the Underworld.

It wasn't until Mal lived in Auradon that she had begun to realize children weren't meant to fear their parents. The children of Auradon's love wasn't tinged with the fear of punishment or failure, their minds corrupted with prejudice and hatred, plotting revenge against for the sins of their fathers and mothers against people they had never met. Until Ben, the closest she had ever come to love was with her friends: Evie, Carlos, and Jay. They may have been villains' kids – damned from birth; born with evil in their blood, in their bones; their hearts twisted with malice and hate as they grew up – but they had always been faithful to one another. They had always been there for Mal – her support system, her family, and her home. Their friendship was perhaps the first indicator that the four of them possessed the ability to love, that they were essentially good.

Mal thought of her friends, sleeping peacefully in their warm beds – Dude curled up at Carlos' feet, Evie with a textbook open on her lap, Jay sprawled out at an odd angle – and she smiled fondly. She thought of Queen Belle and the gentle, patient way she spoke to her son, the quiet grace and confidence with which she carried herself; sometimes she would brush the hair away from Ben's face, like he was still a small child, and when he wasn't looking – giving a speech or welcoming the freshmen to their first day of school, Mal watching from the background – Belle would look at him, and the love in her eyes was bright and beautiful. Mal's heart would squeeze in a nauseating mixture of happiness, desire, and sorrow. She knew her mother had never looked at her that way.

Ben's face – his warm smile, his kind eyes, crinkled at the corners when he laughed, his handsome features – swam before her vision, peering out at her from boarded up windows. His head inclined and his lips turned up at the corners, smiling down at her: "I finally understand the difference between pretty and beautiful." The sweet, smooth huskiness of his voice, like music, the sincerity of every word he spoke, the gentleness of his heart played on his face for all to read and see. Mal shook off the image. None of that. She couldn't think of him, not here. He did not belong here among these littered streets and gutters. He was far better than that, than her. She had made her choice. No regrets.

Mal hadn't seen any residents of the Isle (besides her friends) in almost a year. Her mother's shadow had always cast her influence over the city, an inescapable power that made them bend to her will, but Mal didn't know how things had changed since her mother's failed scheme. She didn't know how the other villains would look at her now, changed as she was by her days in Auradon, changed as they were by their freedom from Maleficent. She was different; she could feel it in every pore of her body – the goodness that wanted to spill out of her, like a lantern peeking through a shade punched with holes. They would see it on her face, she was certain. _Fake it until you make it_ – that was her new motto in life. She just needed to act like the royal witch that she was, flaunt her wickedness and false confidence, and pray the Isle's inhabitants accepted her back into their ranks.

"Why, Mal?" the little voice in her head asked, and it sounded oddly like Ben. "Why do you still need to fit in here? What's your long-term plan?"

She didn't have a plan. All she knew was that she had to get away from all that glitter and glare and the prying eyes. She needed a vacation from Auradon, a chance to rediscover herself. This was where she was born – surely she would find herself here if she could anywhere."Shut up," she commanded the voice. "I don't want to hear you anymore."

Laughter and music poured out of the grimy windows and the open door, hanging askew on its crooked hinges, of the old Slaughtered Prince tavern – the favorite watering hole of Villain Kids and drunken villains. It was filled to the brim with old pirates who were missing limbs and eyeballs, recounting slurred versions of their days on the Jolly Roger and filling their heads with visions of Neverland – telling their fairy stories; nameless members of would-be mobs with faces and stories no one remembered, slamming down empty tankards and singing bawdy songs, bemoaning the time they allowed such-and-such an opportunity to slip through their fingers. _Blah, blah, blah_ , the Villain kids mimicked, assured of their own superiority and invincibility in their youth, swiping glass eyes and pieces of silver when the owners weren't looking, mocking their elders and believing in the same situations they never would have made the same mistakes.

In the back of the tavern, hidden behind shadows in dark booths, flames flickering off their cutlasses and swords, the gleam of a hook here or an jewel there, were the worst of the worst. The true villains, with their ruthless black hearts and cruel eyes. They didn't sing or tell stories, bemoan their fates. They were silent, malignant spirits prowling the edges of light, waiting for their moment to attack. They drank. They watched. The other patrons tried their best to pretend they weren't there, and sometimes succeeded in forgetting their existences altogether. As they nursed their mugs of hard liquor, these villains nursed their grudges, plotting and stewing. Their evil intentions only increased in their years of poverty and defeat. Like Maleficent they had ambitions, plans. Unlike her, they intended to succeed.

The smell hit Mal from the sidewalk: ale and sweat, fried meat and unwashed skin, the earthy smells of stale air and bodily functions, too many bodies packed into too warm a room. "Ya dirty, cheating blither!" Someone shrieked, and a half-full mug sailed out the door and landed at her feet. Liquid splashed onto the toes of her heeled boots. There was laughter inside, music, the sharp heavy taps of multiple dancing feet.

She took a deep breath of the sour air, and thought of her mother. Maleficent wasn't exactly Mother-of-the-Year (Queen Belle's image once again popped unbidden into Mal's mind), but the woman had _presence._ Cool, calm, a little arrogant, grossly self-assured, graceful but scornful of graciousness, mighty and strong. Mal had been taught to abhor all signs of weakness.

She stepped into the tavern, threw her arms at her sides, her head titled just so, that pretty cocky smirk she had perfected at the age of nine painted on her red lips. "I'm back!" she proclaimed. For a moment, the entire room stilled. The carousing stopped, conversation halted. Wide eyes stared at her. No one moved. No one breathed. It was as if someone had hit pause on a movie.

Then: play. Everything jumped abruptly back into motion. A blur of color and noise. The volume increased several decibels. Whoops and hollers, shouts of joy and surprise, mugs banged and hands clapped against the wooden counter. A few of the VKs rushed up to Mal, tentatively reaching forward with their hands to touch her, in case she was nothing more than a figment of their imaginations. They heaped questions upon her, speaking rapidly and loudly, trying to be heard over the others. Mal laughed.

"Well, well, well. Look what the catfish dragged in." From the shadows, a young woman appeared, stepping through the smoky haze like a specter from the Underworld. Her black and blue hair was braided in a hundred braids which fell to her waist. Mal was reminded of stories of the Gorgons, Medusa in particular, whose gaze turned people into stone. This girl had those kind of eyes: hard, hateful, cold.

She was flanked by two young men: one wearing black guy-liner and a pirate's hat, the other brawny and broad in his tattered leather. Mal had known them as boys, when they were small and unremarkable, before Harry cut off his hand and replaced it with a hook, before Gil's dimwittedness was made irrelevant by his physical strength. The perfect henchmen, Mal thought scornfully.

"Uma." Her childhood rival, the thorn in her side. She knew Uma had always been jealous of her. The room fell silent, watching in eager anticipation as the daughter of the Sea Witch strode towards the daughter of the Dragon, her hips swaying and her head held high. She stopped with her face only inches from Mal's. They stared each other down. Neither wanting to show the first sign of weakness and look away. Mal's eyes flashed the glowing emerald green for which she was known. Uma's eyes were so dark as to be almost black. They didn't glow but smoldered, like the last embers of some ruined civilization. Something lurked in their depths, a primal anger and viciousness born in the darkest regions of the ocean, unpenetrated by sunlight or warmth. Mal could _feel_ it, crawling over her skin, burrowing in the pit of her soul. She shivered and glanced away.

Uma smiled triumphantly. "What makes you think you're welcome here?" she demanded.

"I was born and raised here, same as you, Uma."

"You're a traitor. You don't belong here. You're a good girl now." Uma walked a complete circle around the purple-haired girl, inspecting her from head to foot. "I can smell it on you. You had the chance to get revenge, and you blew it. You're one of _them._ "

Mal's hands balled into fists at her sides; how often in her life had she heard the same kind of abuse from her mother? Disappointment, frustration, hatred, as Maleficent attempted to groom her daughter as a pawn in her own plans. Uma was baiting her, trying to get her to lash out, but she would not back down. Her mother had been the unofficial queen of the Isle, which made Mal a kind of princess. She had power here, and Uma knew it. She couldn't let Uma show her up in front of her people.

"I'm tired of being good. I'm back, and I'm looking forward to having some fun. Didn't we always have fun?" Several shouts answered Mal, eager to be causing mischief with her again. She had been to Auradon, she had seen and touched magic. Despite her wicked failures, she was their hero. Mal smirked at the young sea witch. "You're welcome to join us, Uma, but I imagine you won't."

Mal turned abruptly on her heel and left, carried out by the thrill of her success. But on the sidewalk she deflated. She walked down the street and paused, sitting down on the curb with her legs stretched in front of her. In the apartment complex behind her, a man shouted at his wife over the screeching of the children, a woman emptied a chamber pot out the window, and a teen spray-painted his name on a wall under the stairwell over a dozen other names.

Mal sighed and rubbed at her temples. She wasn't sure what she had expected on her return home, to pick up where she had left off maybe, but not confrontation. She hadn't anticipated on being scorned and challenged. With Uma now declaring herself the self-proclaimed queen of the Isle, trouble was sure to be brewing. Once the storm broke, Mal wasn't sure how bad it would be and if she could handle the fall out.

Whatever else happened, she knew one thing: the old saying was true. You really can never go home again.


	2. TWO

**TWO**

Mal was wrong.

The worst part about loving someone wasn't the pressure or the distance. It was the fear.

She had always liked to consider herself a fearless person. Long live evil: she laughed in the face of danger. She had run with some of the biggest baddies in history, and made herself the princess of the Isle of the Lost. There was nothing on earth that could make her quake and tremble in her signature heeled purple boots. While the Evil Queen instilled in her daughter the worries of time and old age, which would mar and destroy her physical beauty; and Cruella de Ville terrified her boy with exaggerated stories of the monstrosity of canines; and Jafar inculcated in his son an unhealthy obsession for lamps and a phobia of confined spaces, Maleficent raised her daughter to have a stomach of steel and a heart of stone. She would be afraid of nothing except failure.

So Mal had lived the majority of her young life without fear. Fear, she believed, was a trait of the weak and naive, of people who couldn't take care of themselves. She revelled in all the things the kids of Auradon dreamt of in their nightmares: darkness and wickedness, villains and chaos, poverty and grime, things that creep and crawl and go bump in the night. She smiled at the silly fears of the goody-two-shoes, her green eyes glowing playfully. "Oh," she'd purr in delight, "sounds like fun."

Mal hadn't believed she could feel fear. She believed she had been genetically blessed never know it. She'd watch in pity as Carlos cowered each time a dog howled, and Evie frowned into a silver mirror and pulled at non-existent wrinkles under her eyes, but she couldn't relate. She had never known the meaning of fear - until now. Until Ben. She learned the terror of loss.

Ben had been wrong too. There wasn't good in everyone. Some of the inhabitants of the Isle of the Lost were just that – lost, bad. Evil. They could not be, and did not want to be, saved. Like their parents before them, they gazed upon goodness and sneered. When they saw light, they wanted to obliterate every last trace of it. Snuff it out, devour it, slaughter it – until only darkness remained.

Ben was everything in the world that was good and right and pure. He was the incarnate of the ancient, holy knights of the round table. King Arthur himself in all his might, wisdom, and glory. He was the sun, shining his light and goodness wherever he went, on all who stood in his presence, shining into the deepest darkest places of their selves, giving them warmth and life. He shone upon them all in equal measure - peasant and royalty, villain and hero. He was _that_ caring, that loving, that good. In his eyes there was no difference among people: everyone had the potential for good.

 _Fool_. He was a fool. Mal knew the truth. Why couldn't he see? Some people were just born bad. They don't _want_ to be good. Some people don't belong in the light.

She didn't deserve him. She realized that now. And perhaps it had been cowardly and wrong, but she had run way from him, from the light she did not deserve, to hide herself in the familiar darkness. She had left him without word, without parting kiss. Maybe she would never see him again. The idea panged her heart, but it was for the best. She needed to separate herself from him now before he got hurt.

But Ben had come after her, the idiot. Evie, Jay, and Carlos - her dearest confidantes – had seen her breaking point, had witnessed her trying to support all the pressure bearing down upon her, bleaching her of the mischief that made her Mal, and they had confessed the truth to Ben. They told Ben of her flight, and he had joined them on their mission to bring her home. Stubborn, he would not be left behind, But, ugh, she was home, didn't he understand? The Isle of the Lost, of lost souls, was where she belonged. They were from different worlds. He didn't belong here. No matter what preconceived notions he had formed in his mind of the Isle, it was a million times worse than he could have ever imagined. The Isle would chew him up and spit him out.

Mal was furious. Her friends should have known better. The Isle was as much a part of them as it was of her. They should have known Ben wouldn't survive here. They should have done whatever necessary to keep him from accompanying them: lied, run away, tied him to a chair, locked him in a closet, sprayed him with Evie's special perfume to knock him unconscious. Anything but actually bring him along.

Instead, they had costumed him up in tatters, the filthy garb of street urchins. Desecrated his beautiful, unblemished, royal frame by dressing him in the rags of the wicked. The attire of the vile and virtueless. But they couldn't disguise the light, and couldn't hide it. They could not dull what so clearly radiated through.

They should have known: the darkness always finds the light in the end.

They had brought the heir to the throne of the Auradon into the lion's den! Mal was mad at her friends for not thinking. Mad at Ben for coming after her, for being unable to see the irreparable distance between them. Mostly, she was mad at herself. Angry for hurting him, for being incapable of being the girlfriend he needed, for being unable to love him as he deserved, and failing him in all the ways that mattered.

Evie, Jay, and Carlos had been wrong. Mal had been wrong. Ben had been wrong.

Some people were beyond saving. Sometimes the damned stayed damned, and no amount of light or goodness or love could change them. Uma was one of those kids – as cold and ruthless as her mother. She was a raging tidal wave, dashing ships against jagged rocks, shattering them into pieces, and swallowing the hearty sailors in her black waters and drowning them in eternal damnation. Ben was the lighthouse on the shore, directing Mal out of the darkness and to the safe harbors of love and goodness. He was home. He was light. He radiated. Sometimes he glowed so brightly, it hurt Mal just to look upon him. Her heart burst and pounded, so hard and fast she thought it would leap from her chest.

Uma had Ben. _Her_ Ben. She wouldn't hesitate to destroy him.

Mal didn't know the details of what had happened. She received the story in rushed fragments she had no time to piece together. Her friends and boyfriend had left Auardon Prep at night, sneaking out of castle rooms and through beautiful gardens, past knights in the garb of security officers standing sentinel at the main gate. Ben had "appropriated" the barrier's remote from his head of security, and they arrived over the bridge and on the Isle on foot and unarmed. They had felt the change in their air, as the magic disappeared. The delicious electric current replaced by a stagnant flatness tasting of old pennies and whiskey. The old spark of mischief had gleamed in their eyes. Filled with nostalgia for their wicked days on the Isle, for the old refrains of "Rotten to the Core," the badness in their bones and genetic disposition, the goodness they had demonstrated since attending Auradon Prep leaked out of them, dissipating into the chilly air. Ben, overwhelmed by the stench of disease and evil and human filth, noted the change in their demeanour. The arrogant smirk on Jay's lips, the extra swagger in Evie's walk, the impish crinkle in Carlos' nose. He wondered if perhaps this was a bad idea. This was his first time outside the safe borders of Auradon.

Caught up in their excitement and the thrill of home, the VK navigated the streets easily - knowing when to turn and jump, winding down narrow alleys in an endless dark labyrinth. Lithe and graceful like predatory cats stalking through the dark. Ben followed. Reliant on the leadership of others, completely out of his element, he tried to keep up in unfamiliar settings as his friends whooped and hollered, disappeared into dark windows and reemerged on rooftops, creeping into smashed lightless windows and slinking along beams no wider than his foot.

Despite his athletic ability and strength, Ben struggled to keep up. His eyes were not accustomed to such total darkness. The unlevel ground, watered with sweat and blood and tears, was foreign to his feet. He stumbled over a wad of old, dusty clothes he mournfully realized was a person.

By her friends' estimate Ben fell behind somewhere between the pawn shop, which dealt in household knickknacks that had once been magical objects, and the tavern.

Ben was lost on the Isle of the Lost.

They had run into Mal as the first light of dawn was creeping over the horizon, the magical barrier shimmering palely in its light. She was prowling the inside of the nearly empty tavern. The lights were dim, and old Smee was sitting at a table in the corner, his fist clutched around a stale tankard of ale, his cheek smushed against the wooden grain as he snored loudly. Mal paced. Uma had tried to show her up, and she needed to take action. She needed to decide her next move. A few nameless flunkies sat on bar stools, watching her with a simultaneous mixture of confusion, awe, and a healthy dose of fear. With each step, the fierceness pulsated from her skin. Wafting off like the smoke of the great dragon sleeping within.

Ben was instructed by Jay to wait outside.

Lafayette, the son of second-rate sidekick LaFou, noticed the advancing trio first. He hollered a delighted "hallo," and dusted off his coat-tails before rising to greet Carlos with a good-natured slap on the back. Mal paused mid-stride and leaped on her friends with exclamations of surprise and joy, and hearty embraces. "What are you guys doing here?"

"We came after you, of course."

"Why did you leave?"

Mal's face darkened. How could she put into words the complex feelings roiling inside her? How could she explain the strange dichotomy of home and not-home? Of wanting to be good, but hating the pressure immensely? Of wanting to free herself from her legacy of evil and wickedness, but craving the days when she could let loose and cause mischief and no one scorned or hindered or looked down on her? "I needed to get away," she said simply.

Evie looked at her with her gentle dark eyes. She had eyes as warm as freshly brewed coffee. The kind full of cocoa-y goodness and kindness, melting you with their warmth, until you were a gooey mushy puddle, and you confined in her all your hopes and fears and sadness. It was hard to believe someone with eyes like that could be wicked, but Evie reserved that look for her friends, whom she loved. Mal knew those same eyes could be bitter and sexy as dark chocolate and wine, coupled with a crimson candy pout that could manipulate anyone into giving her her way. "Are you alright?" those eyes asked now. And though the question was silent, Mal heard it, and shook her head. _No_.

"You need to come back to Auradon Prep," Carlos was saying, the one among the four of them who was perhaps least pleased about returning to the Isle. It held very few good memories for him - and already his heart ached for leaving Dude behind. (But he would never have brought the dog to the Isle. Not when people like his mother lived there.) "Ben wanted to tell you himself-"

"Ben?" Mal's heart squeezed painfully at the sound of his name, and for an instant her conviction wavered.

"He's waiting for you outside."

"Here? He's here?" Mal's ears roared with all the blood that suddenly rushed to her head. Impossible. He wouldn't have come to the Isle, would he?

"He wants to see you, to tell you he's sorry." Evie's voice was as gentle as her eyes. But there was something stern there too. A command: that boy desperately loves you, so you _will_ go outside and listen to him.

"Sorry? He doesn't have anything... …he's here…right now? But it's dangerous…if anyone knew… … I don't think I can...not right now."

"Mal. You need to." Evie was right. Whatever happened next, whatever the future held, Mal couldn't run away from this. She needed to be honest with Ben. She needed to hear what he had to say. She needed to tell him she still loved him. But she was nervous. She was fearful if she saw those lovely eyes, if he pulled her into his strong arms, her resolve would crumble and she'd return to Auradon with him.

Mal spent outside into the bright morning sun. The air was hardly any fresher outside than it was inside. There was no one in sight. "Where's Ben?"

"What do you mean 'where's Ben'? He's right-" Carlos glanced to his right, looking at the spot where they had left him, but the street was empty. He whipped his head around and looked to the left. Nothing. He spun a complete 360 degree circle. Ben was nowhere in sight.

"Where'd he go?" Jay and Evie shared a frown. Carlos cupped his hands around his mouth. "Ben!" he shouted. Jay elbowed him painfully in the side. "Ow!"

"You can't just start yelling his name around here."

"Oh. Right."

"Where's Ben?" Mal searched up and down the street, waiting for the promised boyfriend to materialize in front of her. Her friends looked at each other helplessly. "Where is he? Where's Ben?" she repeated, grinding her teeth together to keep from shouting. The question became frantic, and she fought to swallow the panic bubbling up inside her. "Where's Ben? Where is he? You said he was waiting outside. He should be here. Where is he?!"

Jay shrugged. Carlos held up his hands in feeble defense. "He _was_ right here."

Evie placed a reassuring hand on Mal's slumped shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll find him."

Gil found Ben first.


End file.
